Tag: serious person

You should thank God [for bank bailouts]. Now, if you talk about bailouts for everybody else, there comes a place where if you just start bailing out all the individuals instead of telling them to adapt, the culture dies. There’s danger in just shoveling out money to people who say, ‘My life is a little harder than it used to be,’ […] At a certain place you’ve got to say to [those] people, ‘Suck it in and cope, buddy. Suck it in and cope.’

Charles Munger, billionaire vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., in a discussion at the University of Michigan on Sept. 14.

Would be breathtaking if the view weren’t so pervasive. The rest are just smart enough not to say it. We can all rest easy in the knowledge that Charlie will never, ever have to suck it up and cope about anything. Such a thing just wouldn’t be moral.

Source: bloomberg.com

[Nate Silver’s] entire probability-based way of looking at politics ran against the kind of political journalism that The Times specializes in: polling, the horse race, campaign coverage, analysis based on campaign-trail observation, and opinion writing, or “punditry,” as he put it, famously describing it as “fundamentally useless.”

Margaret Sullivan, Public Editor of the New York Times and quoted on Political Animal by Ed Kilgore, helpfully points out just how fetid a swamp modern “journalism” has become. If you’re not a stenographer, specializing in “horse race […] or ‘punditry’” you need not apply and your brand of, uh, being right and pointing out just how wrong our gang of Wise Serious People are is entirely inconvenient and works against our business model, such as it is. Sad.

A Few Differences

Juan Cole runs down the Top 10 differences between the treatment of Edward Snowden and recently outed (suspected) Stuxnet leaker General James “Hoss” Cartwright:

  1. No one will obsess about the exercise habits of Gen. Cartwright’s wife.

  2. Gen. Cartwright will not be characterized as “a 63-year-old hacker.”

  3. Gen. Cartwright will not be described as “nerdy” or “flaky.”

  4. David Gregory will not ask that David Sanger be prosecuted for espionage because he aided and abetted Cartwright’s leaking.

  5. We won’t get stories every day about where in McLean, Virginia, Gen. Cartwright is living.

  6. Gen. Cartwright won’t be accused of being a spy for Iran.

  7. No lurid stories will be rehearsed on the Sunday afternoon shows about Cartwright’s allegedly overly familiar relationship with a young female aide in 2009, with heavy innuendo as to what the episode said about his reckless character.

  8. No FBI informants will be placed inside the elite Alfalfa Club in DC that Cartwright was known to attend.

  9. Cartwright’s loyalty to the United States won’t be impugned by anchors or congressmen.

  10. Dirt won’t be dug up on David Sanger’s private life in an attempt to discredit his reporting on Cartwright’s Stuxnet.

It’s not what is done. It is who does it that matters in Washington. Even past closeness to power covers a multitude of sins.

Yep. Read the whole thing

A Few Differences

[Politico’s] Harris and VandeHei seem to lack very much curiosity for the world outside of the [Washington DC | Beltway] bubble. Harris claims it’s not worth his time to read 538, and VandeHei characterizes my work as “trying to use numbers to prove stuff”. Instead, what 538 is really about is providing a critical perspective, and scrutinizing claims on the basis of evidence (statistical or otherwise). In order to do that, you have to believe that there is some sort of truth outside the bubble – what would be called the “objective” world in a scientific or philosophical context. Politico, by contrast, sometimes seems to operate within a “post-truth” worldview. Some people think that is the very essence of savvy, modern journalism, but my bet is that journalism is headed in another direction – toward being more critical and empirical.

Nate Silver fairly destroys the Politico “brain trust.” Hope he’s right on that last point. I sorely doubt it.

Tangentially, I love that Harris, who is setting out to “revive long form journalism” on a Politico spinoff thinks the actual, hard facts and occasionally long-form journalism on 538 isn’t “worth his time.” Those two don’t just lack curiosity re: Outside the DC Bubble. As far as I can tell, they lack curiosity about actual information in all forms.

Obama is still trying to win over the Serious People, by showing that he’s willing to do what they consider Serious — which just about always means sticking it to the poor and the middle class. The idea is that they will finally drop the false equivalence, and admit that he’s reasonable while the GOP is mean-spirited and crazy.

But it won’t happen. Watch the Washington Post editorial page over the next few days. I hereby predict that it will damn Obama with faint praise, saying that while it’s a small step in the right direction, of course it’s inadequate — and anyway, Obama is to blame for Republican intransigence, because he could make them accept a Grand Bargain that includes major revenue increases if only he would show Leadership ™.

Paul Krugman gets it right on the rumored Obama budget.
This is the classic misstep; sure, it’s purely symbolic, but it moves the discussion to the right, damages what should be a through-line about the worth (and therefore the inviolability of) Social Security, and sets the stage for a Grand Bargain that is even further to the right than this “symbolic” proposal. After all, this is now Obama’s starting position. Any “compromise” will by necessity “hurt” Obama a little more in exchange for exactly zero GOP concessions and, additionally and without regard to any possible outcome, hands the GOP a readymade 2014 advertising campaign about Democrat cuts to your Social Security.
It’s just the way Washington works now. And Obama’s people still haven’t figured it out and, apparently, never will.

Republicans have very decidedly not agreed to any kind of tax reform that raises federal revenues. This is the whole crux of the debate. They have never agreed to anything other than revenue-neutral tax reform.

Kevin Drum, saying what should be printed in the maximum size possible, laminated in armor-strength plastic, and posted on the wall of every news agency large and small. Every single news outlet gets this simple, straightforward fact utterly and completely wrong every single time they venture here. Wishing hard and clapping louder will not make the GOP sensible. Neither will acting as though they want a “sensible” deal when they have made no such overtures, large or small.

Reporting this as though both parties are equally at fault is doing The Republic no favors.

If you stabilize the debt in some reasonable way, we’re going to have growth. The unemployment rate should come down.

Bob Woodward, very serious person, opines on the economic situation during a Meet the Press appearance.

While I certainly don’t anticipate David Gregory will ever produce a substantive followup, one could at least assume anyone in the employ of a major media conglomerate could muster the five whys. You wouldn’t even have to break out all five to demonstrate that Woodward is comically wrong and furthermore has not one fucking idea about what he’s saying.

We’ll have to leave it there…

[David] Brooks begins [his column today] by noting that the Grand Bargain on the deficit, which he has spent the last two years relentlessly touting, is not actually possible. Why is it impossible? Because, he writes, “A political class that botched the fiscal cliff so badly are not going to be capable of a gigantic deal on complex issues.”

Oh, the political class? That’s funny. In 2011, Obama offered an astonishingly generous budget deal to House Republicans, and Brooks argued at the time that if the GOP turned the deal down, it would prove their “fanaticism.” Naturally, they turned it down. Obama continues to offer a bargain including higher revenue through tax reform in return for lower spending on retirement programs, but Republicans refuse to consider higher taxes. So, in summary, this proves “the political class” is to blame.

Jonathan Chait thoroughly destroys David Brooks. You should really treat yourself to the whole thing.
Source: New York Magazine

[The Hastert] rule is completely dead. The Democrats now effectively control the floor because nothing ‘big’ will come to the floor without knowing in advance that lots of Democrats support it. That gives the Democrats tremendous power in a body where the minority is not designed to have much power.

Unnamed Republican Aide, likening the appropriate and intended function of the House to “tremendous power.” How we can have an MSM that drones on and on about “reaching across the aisle” in the face of a reality that includes a de facto rule stating that nothing moves unless it will pass with only majority votes is and long has been beyond me.

Even still, former Speaker Hastert’s own reaction to the weakening and even ending of his “rule” is all the more telling:

Maybe you can do it once, maybe you can do it twice, but when you start making deals when you have to get Democrats to pass the legislation, you are not in power anymore.

So, then, making a deal at all is tantamount to surrendering all power. Breathtaking.

Source: rollcall.com

There Is No GOP Budget Proposal

Can we please at least agree that vaguely worded letters sent to the President do not constitute a legislative proposal? Or did the CBO start scoring letters that are 90% vacuous talking points; add to that the fact that these very empty talking points were soundly crushed by plebiscite just weeks ago?

Likewise, slightly less vague details provided on background do not a serious proposal make. These details are provided on background precisely so they may be disavowed at any moment. This is not “Boehner’s Proposal.” It is bullshit. But, even then, the GOP proposes extracting from the backs of the poor, elderly, and infirm a dollar value less than half of what Obama attains by slightly inconveniencing the very rich. Apparently this fact was not worth noting, background or otherwise.

Our media entertainment complex finds none of this worth noting. Math is hard and so very boring, but can’t we at least admit the vacuity and shady sourcing of this “plan” when reporting it? Apparently not.